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Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Priceline Advanced Rebidding

Priceline has proven to be one of the best places to get high star rating hotels at cheap discounts, if you know how to bid properly, or rather RE-bid properly.

Novices should first familiarize themselves with the immediate rebid system whereby "free" rebids are gleaned by adding zones which do not have high enough star ratings for which you are bidding. For example, say you are looking for 4-star hotels in a certain area, by adding a zone which only has 3-star hotels as their highest rating, you can immediately rebid without fear of getting a hotel in that region. This is in essence a "free" rebid. Utilize this method by adding all inapplicable regions to your bidding strategy. This works best when you are bidding for high star rating hotels. Note, resorts are included in 4-star hotel bids, therefore pay close attention when adding regions which have resorts.

Advance rebidding is a method by which you utilize permutations of the above method to gain the most rebids in one session possible. Of course in every rebid, you'll have to raise your bid incrementally, but this allows you to start at "rock bottom" and work your way up to your max with as many bids as possible. See the following example:

Here is a hypothetical city that you are bidding on:

Zone A: Has 4* Hotels
Zone B: Nothing 4* or above
Zone C: Nothing 4* or above
Zone D: Nothing 4* or above

With standard rebidding techniques, this presents itself as 3 free rebid zones, therefore only 3 free rebidding opportunities for a 4* Zone A hotel.

Bid1: A
Bid2: A+B
Bid3: A+B+C
Bid4: A+B+C+D

However, with advance rebidding, the method yields 6 free rebids.

Bid1: A
Bid2: A + B (as a free rebid)
Bid3: A + C (on a totally new bid)
Bid4: A + D (on a totally new bid)
Bid5: A + B + C (on a totally new bid)
Bid6: A + B + D (on a totally new bid)
Bid7: A + B + C + D (as a free rebid)

Priceline does not recognize that Bid2 & Bid3 combined duplicates Bid5, therefore Bid5 is a valid free re-bid.

The caveat is that this does not work in reverse. If you did Bid5 first, then Bid1, Bid2 & Bid3 would be invalidated. You must "work your way up" the permutation so to speak, and start completely new bids with each permutation.

In instances where you don't care for a particular region, only star rating, you can add other sites, say with 4-star hotels (it you are shooting for 4-stars) into your permutations and have even MORE free rebids.

This process is fairly simple, but can be messed up easily; I recommend you sit down with a scratch sheet of paper and write down all your permutations first, and then do your bidding, while making sure that you work your way up your permutations.

If you have a spouse, family member or significant other, they can likewise make Priceline bids in the same fashion and in essence double your rebids, so to speak, as long as you use a different credit card number.

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